DPRG mailing list archives: DPRG: Wheel Chair Dreamin

Thu Feb 20 05:04:07 CST 1997

At 12:58 PM 2/19/97 -0600, you wrote:
>
>Was pondering the wheelchair robot, when I got to thinking about
>what it should have.  I like to see it have at least one arm, and
>at least a video camera on it, a compass, and speech, and a radio
>link.
>
Mine will have an arm, I've got a linear actuator that I want to put a pair
of charging contacts on and have it "plug" itself in when necessary,  havn't
yet figured out how it will accurately line up with the recepticle yet.  I
think I'll have it home in on a "nest", and have tracks to which will force
it into a strait line, then just stop and plug in..

>Maybe this WC (hey how about WC Fields?... Naw, it'd become a lush
>robot.) could roll up to an object, see it with it's robotic vision,
>and grab it with it's robotic arm.  I suppose that's quite a task,
>but wouldn't that be cool?  (Doesn't this sound like stuff the HERO
>robot wanted to do?)
>
>It seems that a cheap (say $99) video capture card could get the video
>in and convert it to a gif or jpeg.  Some other software could read
>in those gifs (or jpegs) and do some sort of analysis on it.  The
>video capture board my dad let me borrow has such a program that can
>be downloaded from the internet that does that but was geared for
>a web image server.  I figure a robot could use a similar program for
>image input to an image analysis program.
>
>Some of these things seem to need Windoze instead of Linux. :-(
>Perish the thought.  ;-)
>
>It'd be nice to have a radio link to it so that it could be controlled
>remotely, or even possibly allow it to send back images (the link
>may be too slow for that).  Maybe the video could be sent back via a
>video transmitter or something like that.  

Actually, I was thinking of a 6 meter link myself. Pretty cool.

>We could hook it to Steve's server for internet control?... 
>Steve would never go for that I'm sure.  But wouldn't it be cool to have
>control over the internet, and it could relay back the images over
>the web?  Grab stuff with the arm over the internet and see it do it?
>Dreams are free, right?
>
>Speech would be nice for showy stuff.
>
>A vacuum and lawn mower attachments?  
>
Definately a vacuum attachment.  Also a 'go get me a beer subroutine'.

>....or Telsa Theft deterrant devices? <wicked grin>

Brutal, Jim, brutal.  I was thinking about a loud piercing alarm.  Kinda
like those personal alarms you can get for under $20  that kill your eardrums.

bcoron at nac.net
http//:www.nac.net/~users/bcoron